In case you missed it, the tickets to Taylor Swift’s Singapore concert next year went live this week.

On Wednesday, Jul. 5, the presale tickets, limited to UOB cardholders, went live at noon and sold out in three hours. The virtual queue exceeded one million people.

By Wednesday night, some diehard Swifties had already begun showing up at SingPost outlets, prepared to camp out until Friday, Jul. 7.

The general sale was slated to start on Friday at noon, and SingPost outlets offered hopeful concertgoers a chance to skip the virtual queue and secure their tickets, provided they had received an access code from a registration event one week prior.

On Thursday and Friday, Mothership went around various SingPost outlets across the island, collating the experiences of Swifties and capturing their reactions.

@mothershipsg the countdown begins #tiktoksg #sgnews #taylorswift #theerastour #sgconcert #singpost ♬ original sound - Mothership.sg

During these two days, SingPost outlets were more identifiable than usual by long lines of people snaking out of their entrances.

The outlet at Bras Basah was no exception, and when Mothership reached shortly after 10am on Friday morning, there were around 30 people queuing in a cordoned-off space outside the outlet.

Some were sitting comfortable on camping chairs, others leaned on railings. One particularly well-prepared party seemed to have brought an inflatable bed and was using its deflated form as a mat to sit on.

Mothership approached the first two groups in line, hoping to understand the situation.

Started queueing at 10am

The first group was a brother and sister with the surname Chan. Both were sitting on cozy-looking camping chairs when Mothership approached them.

Both were in their 20s, and the brother had taken time off from work to queue.

He had arrived at 10am the day before and was shocked to be the first in line.

The siblings had decided to split up at first, with the sister going to the SingPost outlet in Serangoon Central. However, when she saw that there was already a line there, she decided it was better to join her brother at Bras Basah.

Since no one else was there when they arrived, they did question if they’d jumped the gun a little:

“I was dumbfounded as I did not expect to be the first,” the brother said, “However, I also felt pretty dumb for being so early as the next group only arrived one hour later. I only began queuing due to the articles published that said that people were already queueing two nights before the actual sale.”

A girl in her 20s from the next group, surname Tan, told Mothership that when she arrived and saw the siblings already there, they actually were surprised by how few people there were given the central location.

Afterward, the two shared a sense of camaraderie for being the “first ones to arrive” and the two groups started talking and getting to know each other.

Both groups had one access code each and were hoping to walk away with four tickets with each access code the next day.

It was a good thing they got along, since they would be spending almost the next 24 hours sitting next to each other.

High tensions, but free ice cream

Naturally, the queue grew longer with more time. Thankfully, people in the queue were able to spend the night inside the SingPost outlet itself since it was open 24 hours, a much better alternative to the open-air corridor outside.

For the Chan siblings and Tan, this was their first time camping overnight for concert tickets. Tan, who had queued for kpop concerts in the past, said that it was usually fine for her to arrive early morning and be first in line on those occasions.

Some of the people that arrived after them, they said, seemed far more prepared than them. Someone had brought inflatable beds, while someone else brought a whole mahjong set to pass the time.

However, tensions understandably grew as the queue did.

Every person in front of you, after all, was at least one less ticket for you.

And with SingPost saying on their Instagram page that chances were “very low” for anyone beyond the 30^th position to secure a ticket, people were paying close attention to queue sizes.

At one point, Mothership was told, tensions flared within the queue due to some mistallying of access codes.

Some had started tallying access codes held by those present to get a more accurate representation of the true size of the queue – each access code was eligible for four tickets – but an inconsistency caused a disagreement to arise between a few groups.

After all, a group of four with only one access code couldn’t hog as many tickets a two people with two access codes.

However, according to the brother, “one of them ended up buying everybody ice cream to ease the tension and keep cool in the humid office.”

Rotating queue shifts, queue based on "moral" system

One possible reason for the disagreement, the sister shared, was because some people couldn’t spend the whole 24 hours camping in SingPost.

As a result, there were often people joining and leaving the queue, sometimes to act as substitutes for existing members of the queue. Often times, it was their "moral code" that kept the queue's integrity, according to Tan and the Chan siblings.

Both Tan and the Chan siblings had done this as well, and left late at night, with family members and friends coming in to hold their place in the line for them.

They also shared that they, and many other people as well, usually resorted to food deliveries for their meals.

In the case of the Chan siblings, they asked their older sister to hold their spot. However, being the first in line, the original duo had become recognisable to everyone else, and their newly-appeared sister complained of being the target of unfriendly stares throughout the night and said she felt “unsafe”.

Technical difficulties after sales went live

The Chan siblings and Tan returned to Bras Basah the next day to re-join the queue. At some point in the morning, the queue was shifted outside so that SingPost’s staff could clean up the area.

At around 11:30am, half an hour before the tickets were scheduled to go live, the branch manager of Bras Basah’s SingPost outlet began directing the first few groups to line up before the counter.

She had also given them slips of paper earlier to fill out, including what tickets they wanted to buy, aiming to maximise efficiency the moment the sales began.

By the time the clock struck 12, the Chan siblings and Tan were hunched over the two counters available, credit cards in hand, and across them were two SingPost employees with their fingers hovering above the keyboard, poised to process their orders.

For the next few minutes, everyone was quiet, and all eyes were on them, waiting for the moment of celebration, except it never came.

Ticketmaster, the ticketing platform for Swift’s concert, was having trouble processing the Chan sibling’s payment.

On the other counter, Tan was having trouble even logging into the system.

As the minutes ticked by with no progress, Swifties queuing at SingPost outlets across island were venting their frustration with Ticketmaster’s unresponsive infrastructure on social media.

Rumours that virtual queue members were already snagging their tickets caused morale in Bras Basah to sink, as some Swifties began sitting on the floor, their hopes now on their phones and laptops that were registered for the virtual queue.

A few people even approached our Mothership reporter, asking if he had any idea what was causing the delay, which he did not.

The technical delay, from what the Chan siblings understood, was on Ticketmaster’s side. While SingPost could process the transaction on their end, Ticketmaster was likely having trouble handling the surge of requests.

Bras Basah’s first ticket

It was only at 12:40pm that the Bras Basah SingPost outlet sold its first ticket.

Up until then, both groups at the counter could feel "the stares on their backs", adding to their nervousness.

However, the Chan siblings were delighted when they checked their email and found the delivery confirmation in their email.

In fact, the whole outlet was jubilant, cheering for the siblings as they walked out triumphantly with their receipt.

Nobody in the room was more deserving of tickets than the Chan siblings, who had waited for more than 24 hours at that point.

Even Tan, who was still waiting for her own tickets, said that the first thing she felt when she saw them get their tickets was happiness for them.

Tan, who was second in the queue, only managed to get her tickets after 1pm, more than one hour after the tickets went live.

Helpful SingPost staff

While the Bras Basah SingPost’s staff declined to give a comment, the branch manager and other employees were noticeably sincere in helping Swifties with their tickets.

In the brother’s words, “The staff were incredibly friendly and tried their best to keep things civil. They made sure everyone knew the rules and opened another counter for us to be able to secure our tickets.”

It was heartening, though somewhat concerning, when the sister told Mothership that the stress was even getting to their SingPost employee, whose hands had begun to shake while trying to overcome the technical delay.

The branch manager, who was helping Tan, juggled both ticket processing and assisting with regular customers, who came to the outlet with no business related to Taylor Swift.

It was a slightly amusing sight to see regular customers came into the post office looking confused, perhaps wondering why the post office was so popular today.

Maybe the real treasure was the friends we made along the way?

When the first two groups reunited with their tickets secured, the first thing they did was to take a photo and exchange socials.

To their surprise, they’d have another reunion next year, since they’ll be attending the same date.

When asked to reflect on their experience, they agreed that it wasn’t something they’d like to do again, though they were glad that they were able to become good friends from the experience.

The brother rated the whole experience a 6/10, saying “It was quite painful as we just had to sit there and wait. However, I made friends with the people around me in the queue as we were there for more than a day. As I was able to get my tickets, I would say that queueing up was quite worth it and would do it again for this concert. However, I do not believe I will be queueing up for another concert anytime soon as it was quite a tiring thing to do. There are probably easier and less painful ways to secure tickets.”

All photos/footage from Paul Rin